Some thoughts about PTAs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.

This is how it is at our school too. There’s a Halloween/Fall festival, two Bingo nights, a big spring festival, 2-3 movie nights on the blacktop, a donut/breakfast event, and the school social worker/family liaison separately organizes events without the PTA - International Night and science night usually. Then some years there’s also a kids shopping/holiday market and a spring fun run during the school day, which is separate from the school’s Field Day. There’s also a monthly restaurant fundraiser, and a fall and spring fundraiser.

The thing is all these events are VERY well attended and usually get just enough volunteers to help with, like, day of ticket sales, set up/clean up, concession stand, etc. But the planning is SO MUCH WORK. And either the small PTA board of 4-5 people does all the planning (and also volunteers day of) or they can try to outsource the planning to event-specific planning committees but then you run the risk of those folks dropping the ball on planning since they aren’t as familiar with it. It’s not a good situation either way.

And yes there has been push back from teachers/staff and parents about cutting back on some of the events. Bingo night is the pet event of one of the experienced and well-liked teachers. The fall and spring events bring in a lot of vendors and small businesses from the community who get salty if their DJ company isn’t booked for that random Friday afternoon/evening or if the lady who sells (insert random thing) out of her house isn’t invited to sell at the event she’s been coming to since before Covid. The breakfast event is there to celebrate the military since they do it during April and we have a large number of military-connected families. Etc. etc. It’s really the event planning that is the huge time and effort.

Way too many night activities. Are these all weeknights? I'm surprised you can get people to drop everything so many nights a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a high school teacher, think my job is demanding and service enough, so never thought twice about not being part of the elementary school PTA. That said, I deeply appreciate the work they did, which was great for kids (and neutral to positive for teachers too). This PTA ran a ton of free or nominal charge after-school classes for students, interest-based fun programming, and the PTA took care of the logistics, supervision, and hiring of teachers, who were mainly the regular teachers getting paid to run these fun interest classes.

At my high school now, the PTA does a nice job bringing in stress relief activities for students during exam week (lawn games, etc.).

The PTA Teacher Appreciation stuff isn't necessary. I appreciate the intentions, but I don't need special snacks or decorations. I need parents in the community to be aware of our working conditions and support us actively when we are in contract negotiations, which have become increasingly difficult.

I would love to support teachers in advocating for better working conditions. I am not aware of how the contract negotiations impact working conditions. Can you elaborate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't your PTA have committee chairs for each event, and the other executive board members are in other roles, such as communication and support? This is how our PTAs are structured, and I don't feel that events overshadowed other parts of our mission.

Our PTA sponsors like 20 events throughout the school year, there's no way to have a separate committee chair for each event. It's a huge job to put them on and while there's an events chair, the rest of the PTA board including the president dedicate a lot of man hours to the events. The president has told me that event execution is fully half of her job, maybe more, even though it's the part she likes the least.

20 events? Unless this is a K-12 where events are for different divisions this seems like an enormous number.

It absolutely is enormous. The problem is that nothing ever comes off the schedule. A few of these are revenue-generating and I get wanting to have maybe 2-3 school-based festival type events throughout the year to give families a chance to be present and facilitate relationships and school spirit. But our school does like 4-5 fundraisers (one really big one and then several more scattered through the year), I think 6 family night type events (think bingo night, international night, literacy night, etc.), a series of "parent socials" where the PTA provides childcare and parents can socialize, and a couple more smaller things. It's a lot but my understanding is that whenever they suggest scaling back, someone says "no we can't stop doing X event, it's a tradition" so they never do.

They never have enough volunteers, the PTA is really overworked, and it's getting hard to recruit people to take on PTA roles because it's such a heavy lift. I know I have no interest. But we also don't attend most of this stuff so I don't feel guilty. We make 3 or 4 of the family nights throughout the year and I'll write a check for the fundraiser but we don't go, and that's it. My acquaintance is the PTA president and I know she is drowning and I feel bad for her but it's clear the problem is they need to streamline and no one is willing to do it.

This is how it is at our school too. There’s a Halloween/Fall festival, two Bingo nights, a big spring festival, 2-3 movie nights on the blacktop, a donut/breakfast event, and the school social worker/family liaison separately organizes events without the PTA - International Night and science night usually. Then some years there’s also a kids shopping/holiday market and a spring fun run during the school day, which is separate from the school’s Field Day. There’s also a monthly restaurant fundraiser, and a fall and spring fundraiser.

The thing is all these events are VERY well attended and usually get just enough volunteers to help with, like, day of ticket sales, set up/clean up, concession stand, etc. But the planning is SO MUCH WORK. And either the small PTA board of 4-5 people does all the planning (and also volunteers day of) or they can try to outsource the planning to event-specific planning committees but then you run the risk of those folks dropping the ball on planning since they aren’t as familiar with it. It’s not a good situation either way.

And yes there has been push back from teachers/staff and parents about cutting back on some of the events. Bingo night is the pet event of one of the experienced and well-liked teachers. The fall and spring events bring in a lot of vendors and small businesses from the community who get salty if their DJ company isn’t booked for that random Friday afternoon/evening or if the lady who sells (insert random thing) out of her house isn’t invited to sell at the event she’s been coming to since before Covid. The breakfast event is there to celebrate the military since they do it during April and we have a large number of military-connected families. Etc. etc. It’s really the event planning that is the huge time and effort.

Way too many night activities. Are these all weeknights? I'm surprised you can get people to drop everything so many nights a year.

Yes most are weeknights, some are Friday though. And yes enough people do attend and volunteer. Not everyone every time but enough, usually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a high school teacher, think my job is demanding and service enough, so never thought twice about not being part of the elementary school PTA. That said, I deeply appreciate the work they did, which was great for kids (and neutral to positive for teachers too). This PTA ran a ton of free or nominal charge after-school classes for students, interest-based fun programming, and the PTA took care of the logistics, supervision, and hiring of teachers, who were mainly the regular teachers getting paid to run these fun interest classes.

At my high school now, the PTA does a nice job bringing in stress relief activities for students during exam week (lawn games, etc.).

The PTA Teacher Appreciation stuff isn't necessary. I appreciate the intentions, but I don't need special snacks or decorations. I need parents in the community to be aware of our working conditions and support us actively when we are in contract negotiations, which have become increasingly difficult.

I would love to support teachers in advocating for better working conditions. I am not aware of how the contract negotiations impact working conditions. Can you elaborate?

Not the PP you asked, but parents can advocate for teachers duty-free planning periods, to have truly adequate staffing and smaller special education and ESOL caseloads, to have manageable class sizes, etc. those working conditions make all the difference between overwhelm and being able to focus on teaching our students.

[Anonymous]

I did not have the bandwidth to be involved in the PTA and did not want to deal with red tape, admin, etc…

I wanted to focus my time and energy in the classroom. So I was always a room parent who lead the group of room parents for that grade. I was good at rallying our families to volunteer for field trips, raising money in the classroom for classroom supplies or anything the teachers/grade needed such as supplies for specific projects. They also wanted snack donations for classroom events, etc…. We also always organized grade wide teacher appreciation with gifts and gift cards.

I felt it was a much better way to help the teachers and bigger impact on at least the kids in our grades. School wise, I would volunteer at all school events and we always donated money to the school campaign drive.

So if you are not interested in being a part of the PTA, there are other ways to be involved in the school and classroom.